The Casselman Bridge, Once the Longest Stone Arch in America

Just east of Grantsville, a single graceful arch of gray stone leaps over the Casselman River, and for a while it was the longest span of its kind in the entire country. When it was built in eighteen thirteen and eighteen fourteen, this eighty foot stone arch bridge was the longest single span stone arch bridge in the United States. It carried the National Road, the young nation's first great federally funded highway, the route that opened the mountains and pointed settlers and freight toward the west.

The engineer behind it was David Shriver Junior of Cumberland, who took personal charge of the work. There is a wonderful bit of ambition built into the design. The arch was made unusually tall and wide because planners imagined that one day canal boats might need to pass beneath it, if a canal were ever pushed across the Alleghenies.

That canal never came, but the bridge carried wagons, stagecoaches, and eventually automobiles along the National Road for well over a century. Age has caught up with it. In recent years engineers found cracked stone and missing grout, and the state closed the bridge to foot traffic ahead of a major restoration to save this two hundred year old landmark.